Trick or Treat or Trick…

Halloween was great – we spent some time with friends, we spent some time with family, and the kids had a wonderful time. Of course, I think with most kids nothing short of a broken leg or some similar catastrophe could make Halloween un-fun.

I do know that it is a lot easier since the kids can all walk (or run) the entire way. I felt badly for other parents I saw, carrying exhausted toddlers. “Just one more house, okay mommy?” was heard several times.

Of course, the consequence of kids getting bigger is that they now want to go trick-or-treating farther, faster, and longer each year. Last year just doing our neighborhood was fine – this year we covered all of that and then went on to hit up many other nice people in many other nice neighborhoods. Alright, TWO other neighborhoods, but to my feet it SEEMED like many.

I remember Halloween as being one of those seminal coming-of-age events in my childhood. The first time that my brother and I were allowed to go trick-or-treating by ourselves was a very big deal. We had been allowed to walk alone around our neighborhood for several years, but to have that same freedom when it was dark – well, it’s an entirely different world after the sun goes down.

I always seem to remember those childhood Halloween nights the same way – us creeping around, a full moon, a few scattered clouds blowing across the sky. If you took the Peanuts Halloween special (I know, “It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown”, but that seemed too long to put here, but look, now I have. Sorry.) Anyway, if you took the scene from “It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” where Snoopy is sneaking around in the trenches after being shot down by the Red Baron, if you cut out Snoopy and pasted in me and my brother and our friends, you would have my Halloween memories. The dark, the moon, the clouds – I bet I would even remember the spooky music in the background if I tried hard enough.

Seeing my oldest and his friends go through the same coming-of-age experience this year reminded me of that. Many times as we walked through the neighborhood, I wondered if he and his friends were lying in a ditch somewhere, or up a tree, spying on me – like we used to do.